trekkie_

tinfoil heatshield, check

Just another one of my side projects in early development. Meant to be an extremely light weight manned pod. After cutbacks at the KSP, engineers were required to come up with creative solutions. They figured, 9 out of 10 kerbals die at launch, why waste all of that money on command pods? And they're always in their suits anyways. Thus they came up with the cardboard command pod! Get ready for a bumpy ride....here at KSP our new motto is, "It's not only safe, it's safe enough!".

well I'm just not seeing the emissive option in the animation window. I tried adding it with changing just the main color rgb, but no dice. animation name is just fine.

hmmm I wonder...are emissives different in the newer unity/ksp? can't seem to get the animation going properly.

I think she's almost ready for the party... now I just gotta work out the config fx definitions (not sure what will look best, suggestions?), the thrust/isp, and the heat animation. -

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If I don't worry about thrustransforms and their direction, it works fine....as an inert part :/

I tried it both with and without the transform at the parent, and the transform itself has a rotation of -90 along the X axis. your 0.0,0.0,1.0 setting resulted in this... close, but no dice, still not sure which is the best way to get the rotation just right. actually, the part attaches on its side without rotation of the thrust transform at all, by default. even though my axis's in my modeling program are the same as in unity.

see I tried that by entering in rotation values, but it never seemed to be rotating. say I enter in a value of -90 on the thrust transform object alone, it still causes the attachment points to also rotate, making the attachment off to the left or right of the engine rather than straight up.

Finally in the game! I've always had trouble with nodes and orientations and thrust transforms. Obviouisly the thrust transform has to be facing the Z direction. So in unity, I have to shift the model from it's default Y standing position, to its side in order to get it to face the proper direction. But in the game, the attachment node can only attach with the part on its side. Not sure exactly the correct remedy for this.

I think we're just about done with final polishing... It could probably stand to darken up the edge wear a little, but it's mostly just the angle.

here's an untextured final version in unity. I may still work on a highly vacuum friendly version, but this version is definitely meant to be an atmospheric beast with some extra vacuum potential. and the current textured version... it's a pain to get those yellow strip textures just right, for some reason they're not aligned properly in unity. Oh crap now I know why, the texture was upside down

if there's going to be a huge demand for the design style, then I can probably easily create different versions, one for high atmospheric ISP and one for vacuum. for example, this one simple change.... of course, I'd have to come up with a slightly more varied look to the base. I can actually see this as a nice o.6m part, that if grouped in clusters, could provide enough thrust to propel a sizeable ship in vacuum at a decent ISP. but for that kind of setting, it would probably be OP with smaller lighter fuel tanks by itself.

I've been working over time trying to get it through unity. Just some small hiccups here and there like with texture domains a little messed and I actually couldn't export it from my modeling program for a while......I narrowed it down to the bolts. I have no clue how they could be causing a program crash, especially since they're super simple geometry. so I have to redo them. I intended the skirt to be non specular, but the specular gives off a real nice shine in unity, which varies well with the angle. but at the same time kind of makes it out of balance with the diffuse of the rest of the model, not to mention the shimmering you would get from zoomed out viewing, so it's probably better to leave the whole thing (but the bolts) diffuse. It's intended to be a 1.25m engine, kind of like a variation of the skipper/mainsail on a smaller scale (you could still throw a group of them on orange tanks). I think that's the most versatile way. I'm not sure on the final config it will have though.

Just something I've been working on. I'm thinking just a slightly more powerful, slightly more efficient counterpart to the stock mainsail. Or a weaker, but better ISP and smaller version of a mainsail. clocked in at just over 4000 poly's. Not too shabby considering it's all real geometry.

mod makers own their mods (and the direction it goes), simple at that. there's a fundamental difference between freedom of changing or taking over something, and freedom of use. mods are a freedom of use item. keyword: use. not take, USE. I for example, did a complete remake of an old mod, from scratch, in my own vision. The basic elements of design match, but they're completely unique shapes and textures, along with various other custom differences. making something yourself, from scratch, is the only way to go. If you can't do that, then you have no reason to be apart of any modding. General part mods are however, timeless for the most part. They typically work with any or most versions of KSP and only require config changes to work properly, if that. Part mods constitute the majority of mods in the game. For mods in general, you should need the permission of the mod maker to update change or re-release it.....unless those updates are additions you can release yourself third party. Mod makers don't need to take a haitus then possible come back to find their mods are being altered and controlled by someone else, regardless of if credit is given.

just finished putting the radiator part into the game (the simplest part lol). I know it's a simple part but it looks very aesthetically pleasing with virtually any part, it gives off this nice hazy graphite glow. this is basically what I had in mind for it, to be a stackable standalone part. still not sure if it should hold fuel or just be an emissive heatsink that heats up with the throttle. you still can't see all the detail of the texture. there's hundreds of individual screws in those panels and other finer details. all I really need for the engine itself is to work the model orientations and configs. for example, the thrust direction is on the Z axis (off to the left or right) by default for some reason. would seem more logical for it to be on the negative Y axis. so I have to export my model into unity, with it on its side with the exhaust facing the Z axis in order for the effect to come out of the right direction....but then the attachment node becomes crooked and only attach when the engine is on its side. on top of that, besides having an engine config, it doesn't produce thrust when activated and throttled up. it's been a while since I've messed around with configs so I'm having to sift through some documents to find the proper config settings.

my last engine release (trek style warp nacelle in depot) was a radial attach type. a lot of people requested the opposite when I made it, so either way I go, someone will want what it doesn't have. there's tons of non-stock radial mount parts out there to hang it from the sides in multiples. this way, you have the freedom to arrange it any way you like. it's basically done. textures might need a little shade tweaking, and the unity exporting stuff. that's taking longer because last I made a mod, configurations were a bit different with part tools. so I'm getting some small bugs like thrust exhaust always being on, facing the wrong directions no matter what, and no actual thrust being produced, etc.

I think you're always the first to say that on my mods the actual base color is a metal textured med-light gray. it's a 1080x1985 1mb texture, so the details are somewhat high at close up, but still do offer some detail at distances (i.e. actually has some variation to the material than looking like just one color). the coloring you see is from a reflection map when rendering, which gives it that metallic look. you can't really make textures look metallic like that in the game unless you add reflection maps to the game engine. specularity can help somewhat, but it can only go so far. all the various shades will be adjusted in the end so they're visually distinct, where needed. this is probably somewhat accurate to what it would look like in the game right now: you can't really tell, but the very bottom is made of a brushed metal texture, although with ambient occlusion at that setting, the detail gets drowned out. and it is definitely noticeably different shade of a texture, but again in this photo it is difficult to distinguish. in-game the difference would be more noticeable. I could add stuff like blue staining here or there...but it wouldn't look right because it wouldn't be based on any light source or local reflection, which would just make it look unrealistic at most angles. basically, the blue reflection map works to add realism...because it's based a formula for calculating how light/objects look reflecting off a surface. there is a reflection map mod though, that would probably make them look like a mirror finish shiny metal. one final detail. the top radiator looking part is its own separate attachable part. I may just designate it as a fuel tank and allow people to stack them. If not then I will probably make it an emissive part, so it'll get hotter and glow the higher the throttle. as for the exhaust, I'd really like to try to get a semi-massive violent roaring trail, bigger than the 909. this is meant to attach to 1.25 meter parts. all in all the whole thing comes in at a generous but modest ~3000 faces, so this baby is going to look as smooth contoured in-game. I don't know anything about the warp mod.

This is a faithful re-imagining of the original FTL Mk1 drive by nomad. leave feedback or suggestions if you like.

Being a long time member and modder, but having been gone for a few months, I noticed that with the influx of new players from I guess the steam release, KSP modding is kind of taking steps backward due to all of these new 'modders'. I see tons of new but mundane and useless parts. simplistic parts. stuff that is basically a mixed around combination of only a couple basic shapes. there's very little fine details, solid color texturing, etc. I know everyone wants to make something, and old mods get forgotten, but I think it has kind of de-evolved KSP into a stream of mediocrity. It seems that many people are soo eager to make some type of mod, that they essentially just go into a modeling program, stretch a little here on a shape, maybe cut a little there, etc. all in all, 5 minutes of work if you know what you're doing and want to achieve. but that's not the type of modding we need, I don't need some mono colored 3 pronged triangular shunt that serves no purpose. I understand the need for simplicity for slower computers....but all I'm basically seeing is combinations of simple basic shapes cobbled together and stretch along whatever axis, that primarily serve no purpose, not even aesthetically. now of course, no one has to use these parts....but people will. and with the influx of these types of parts, people will more likely come across these parts and load them up just because of their prevalence. we've still got some good modders floating around, but the majority of mods I'm seeing over the last few months just aren't good at all....infact, many are more simplistic than the very early days of KSP modding. Want proof? look at the "show us your pictures" thread. that thread USED to be filled with some pretty awesome and unique screenshots, I even added quite a few of my own to it. Now it's just filled with uninteresting, boring and basic images that anyone can achieve without even trying with simple basic images you might be able to take on your first playthrough of ksp ever. In essence, it's like how instagram de-evolved to pictures of extremely plain things. people instagramming their foot, a chair, a wall, their food, etc. just stuff that isn't picture worthy in general. much like many of these mods, which too aren't picture worthy. I think there's a distinct difference between 'stockalikes' and stuff that claims to be stockalike but are generally more simplistic than the stock parts themselves, while also being completely without aesthetics. I think these types of mods severely degrade the quality of KSP and defund it of innovation. There's only a small handful of new mods I can see that are on par with some of the long time popular mods. Kind of sad really. I came back expecting to see something worthwhile, and I'm just not really seeing much of that.

press 'W' twice as soon as you pull the part out, it'll orient it into the correct position. with larger tanks, it generally attaches more easily. try it with symmetry on or off, or snap alignment on or off, even if you have to stick it to another part, once it sticks, you can pull it off and generally place it anywhere with ease after that. no idea why your 'clock' would go yellow on the pad. are you sure it isn't something to do with the update? my models pretty standard stuff, and there really isn't anything in there that should affect anything like that, it's not like it uses plugins. as for the lag, it may just be the update, or may just be because it isn't running from the gamedata folder yet. this model isn't very high poly, only around 1600 polygons. in comparison, a half life 2 character was something like 5000 polygons back in the day. it shouldn't take much to render the model in the game.

I looked at them, and my initial designs were similar but a bit larger of a funnel, but I'm working on something more like this basically it's where if you align yourself to any two prongs, the complimentary port on your ship will catch them both on top and bottom. also working on a wall of docking nodes and an animated radial docking tube.